driven

I spent a week behind the wheel of the all-new, 2016 Scion iA. In that time, I put more than six hundred miles on Toyota’s latest experiment in badge engineering to see if this Scion might be the one, finally, to lure younger buyers into Toyota’s showrooms.

You’ve Got Some Growing Up To Do

Despite the fact that it’s got a sporty vibe and willing, competent chassis that’s chock-full of the best kind of Mazda DNA, the 2016 Scion iA is going to be a tough sell- largely because it’s not really sure what it’s supposed to be.

Like that beautiful trainwreck you dated in your twenties, the Scion iA has a lot going for it, but it hasn’t really decided what it wants to be when it grows up. Is it a sporty, affordable urban runabout meant to lure college kids into Toyota showrooms? If it is, then what’s the Scion tC for? Is it a practical, yet sporty four-door sedan with enough room to get you and your friends to a summer music festival? Even if Scion didn’t offer the xB, the iA’s petite-class rear seat makes that a definite “No.”

2016 Scion iA | Final Thoughts

Despite its four door layout, the Scion iA is really a two person vehicle with room for an occasional passenger. Hopefully an occasional passenger that doesn’t require a booster seat, too, since those passengers will spend hours and hours kicking the back of your seat all the way to Wisconsin. As such, I think the car would be better served with two larger doors and a marketing department that wasn’t afraid to hearken back to the era of the E30 BMW and call the thing a two door sedan. It would be more fair to the car, and would let its positive qualities in the ride, handling, and front passenger compartment really shine.

As it is, I’d really just recommend the 2016 Scion iA to single twenty-somethings who want to express a willingness to grow up, but who aren’t quite ready to settle down. If that’s you, and you like sporty little sedans, buy an E30 BMW. If you prefer something a little newer, the Scion iA really is basically a Mazda 2, except with Toyota’s excellent dealer network behind it- and that’s high praise.

The new for 2016 Scion iA promised a fun, sporty drive with a tiny footprint and big mile per gallon numbers. The car made a great first impression, but what do I think of the car after a few dates days?

How Was It?

For the first few days of my Scion iA test drive, I was completely smitten with the little car. It was fun- a word which seems to pop up often in my Mazda Miata and Mazda 6 reviews, as well- and seemed to be a car built by people who didn’t think it was OK to punish entry level buyers. This seemed, truly, like a car that I might (gasp!) like to spend my own actual money on. That is, until I tried to fit two adults, a twelve year old, and a toddler in the thing.

Like the Chevy Trax I tested a few weeks ago, the Scion iA is a bit too small for even a small family- and will be totally impractical once baby number three shows up next year. This fact was highlighted when the toddler, who was perched in the middle seat to buy some legroom for the front passengers, spent the entire two-plus hour drive to Wisconsin absolutely kicking the s*** out of both front seats.

It was not an awesome experience.

What Do I Expect Now?

It’s hard to say where we go from here, because I’m alone in any car between eighty and ninety percent of the time- and the Scion iA is a great car for a single driver. It’s that drive to daycare/school every morning that would underline the car’s shortcomings. Even so, it’s a horrible family car- but it’s survivable, and it has been giving back some pretty decent fuel economy figures over the last four hundred miles or so.

Regular Gas 2 readers are already well acquainted with my affection for simple, honest vehicles that do the job of moving people from point A to point B efficiently and reliably. As such, it should come as no surprise that I was psychologically ready to heap enormous praise on the latest tiny sedan from Scion as soon as it got dropped off.

Mazda Zoom-zoom, Toyota Dealer Network

The 2016 Scion iA sedan is the awkward love child of Mazda’s desire to sell more cars and Toyota’s desire to bring millennials into its dealerships. It could be (indeed, it has been) dismissed as “just a Mazda 2 with a Scion badge”, but think about that: it’s a Mazda 2, with a Scion badge!

Toyota has 1500 dealers in the US– more than twice the number Mazda has. And those Mazda dealers tend to stay close to cool, hip, fleek (Fleek? That can’t be right, can it?) urban city centers, leaving a broken down Mazda 2 in the middle of Wyoming a long way from home, potentially. Slap a Toyota/Scion badge on its nose, however, and all is change. While it’s not GM, you can still find a Toyota dealer damn near anywhere there’s a road. It’s a huge bonus, and helps to make a great first impression.

That said, the 2016 Scion iA felt sure-footed and sporty within the first hundred feet of driving it. It is, without question, dynamically superior to its 2015 Toyota Yaris stablemate- but will that be enough to make me fall in love? Stay tuned.

There’s no point in beating around the bush on this one. I really, really liked the little red 2015 Toyota Yaris SE I test-drove last week. There were a few things, small things, that kept it from being perfect. For the first time since we started using this “car dating” format, though, this was a car that I could really see myself living with for the long haul.

You’re Awesome

The 2015 Toyota Yaris SE really rewards enthusiastic driving. Don’t get me wrong — the Yaris is no Honda CRX or Mazda Miata, but it’s more than willing to be pitched into corners and feels leagues ahead of the equally tiny Chevy Spark or the comparably priced Nissan Versa SR. Both of those cars were fun, but the Yaris is a more willing playmate. Factor in the Toyota’s superior resale value and a reputation for Japanese reliability that has eluded the Versa, and the Yaris is the easy choice, here.

Final Thoughts: 2015 Toyota Yaris SE

As I said before, the Yaris isn’t perfect. In a car this size and with this power level, I’d want a manual transmission to ramp up the fun factor. Even without the manual, though, the car is fun enough — and I never saw less than 29 average MPG, no matter how hard I pushed the Yaris. The only thing keeping me from keeping the Yaris, honestly, was the $17,835 as-tested price for the car I was driving. It’s not even that I thought the price was too high — it just seemed like I could buy an awful lot of used car for the same money. You know?

If you’re the type of person who is set on buying a brand new car to get you around town, however, you could do far, far worse than picking up a 2015 Toyota Yaris SE.

Earlier this week, I got a chance to drive a car that I’ve wanted to drive for over a decade. It’s called a GEM. It’s, basically, a glorified electric golf cart that can carry you and your friends from 0-25 MPH on public roads and in a moderate degree of comfort with absolutely zero style. It’s weird-looking, not very practical, overpriced, and (in scientific terms) stupid as Hell.

Naturally, I loved the thing.

When the GEM NEVs first started rolling off assembly lines back in 1998, gas was cheap and Hummers looked like they’d be the next best thing like, forever. If you cared about fuel economy, you were a weird hippie tree-hugger, and if you wanted an electric car, you were Ed Begley, Jr.

So, do the little GEM’s neighborhood capabilities make it worthy of the nearly $12K asking price? Of course not! That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy one if you want one, however, because you will definitely giggle like a lunatic in it.

GEM Neighborhood Electric Vehicle | Fun

Governed at 25 MPH, the little GEM e4S won’t really go fast enough to get you into trouble. Even so, the little “car” felt unstable at 20, let alone 25, so you definitely have the “thrill” of pushing the envelope every time you get behind the wheel.

Similarly, the GEM I drove didn’t have much in the way of side-impact protection, and placed my face about bumper-height to a 4WD Ram truck that I happened to pull out in front of. That’s the kind of death-defying stupidity you normally have to jump out of an airplane to experience, and the GEM lets you feel that sweet combination of near-death endorphins every time you dare take it out onto public roads.

GEM Neighborhood Electric Vehicle | Practical

In terms of practicality, if you can avoid being killed by some idiot “rollin’ coal” into the side of you at an intersection, the little GEM will, in fact, deliver a fair degree of practicality. For starters, you’ll never need to buy gas for it, and it has a decent enough range to make it wholly usable in, say, Oak Park, IL or in the resort towns of Florida’s Keys and New England. In e4S configuration, the GEM will comfortable carry four adults and plenty of golf bags groceries and shopping bags in the sweet-looking stake bed out back. If it were mine, I’d opt for real, wooden stakes, but no one asked me.

GEM Neighborhood Electric Vehicle | Final Thoughts

Unless you can count on a stack of EV credits or you can get away without a hefty insurance bill in your state, the GEM makes absolutely no sense as “a thing to buy with real money”. That said, it is stupid, goofy fun, and I was able to pull this one right up onto the sidewalk to the few places I took it without getting any kind of grief for it (the key is to just walk out like you own the place). So, if you have the money, want something to inexpensively get you around town, and want something you can drive home today instead of the next of never, it might be for you. It’s NOT for you – but, you know, it might be, also.

A few weeks ago, I got to drive around Chicago and Oak Park with two things that got me very excited. The first was a baby girl that had just aced her first physical, and the second was a 2014 Chevy Spark. Said Spark, I’ll have you know, was especially exciting because it was on the short list of “second cars” that the wife and I were, you know, actually considering buying with our own money. Now, I know that’s past tense – but that doesn’t mean we didn’t utterly fall for Chevy’s little bulldog microcar, and I’m going to spoil the ending for you now: if you live in a major city and you’re looking for cheap, fun, reliable transportation for a small family, you should absolutely buy a Chevy Spark.

Of course, the one-sentence review (made popular by Chris DeMorro) isn’t my thing. I like to hear myself talk watch myself type, so the whys and hows of my “definitely you should buy” conclusion in re: the Chevy Spark will be laid out in greater detail, below. Enjoy!

Chevy Spark | Smaller on the Outside

See that up there? That’s a standard sized parking space here in Oak Park, IL … and you can probably fit two Chevy Sparks in it. Maybe 3, if you angle ’em right, and – when about 2/3 of your fellow citizens have almost zero conception of how to effectively parallel park – that’s a huge plus in terms of practicality. Time and time again in the week that I drove the Spark, I found myself gleefully wheeling it into parking spaces that I wouldn’t even try to get into in a Jeep Cherokee.

Did I say, “gleefully”?

Gleefully is an understatement. I was giggling and laughing literally every time I cranked the wheel into a turn or alley or changed lanes into the space left by two other cars. The 2014/5 Chevy Spark is very much a road-legal golf cart in the best possible way, and it makes otherwise nimble-feeling cars feel massive and sluggish. Like steamships. Simply put, if you can drive a Chevy Spark without cracking a smile, you’re probably boring.

Chevy Spark | Bigger on the Inside

The most surprising thing about the Spark, however, isn’t the car’s tiny size (that’s it’s gimmick, along with its 39 MPG highway rating) and it’s not the car’s IIHS Top Safety Pick status (which is huge). Instead, the biggest surprise was how much the Chevy Spark feels like an actual car.

I know that sounds like an obvious thing. I mean, it’s a car, right? Well, yes – but so, too is the Smart ForTwo and so, too is the Mitsubishi Mirage CVT. Both of those, however, require a little bit of suspension of disbelief on the part of the driver. They’re not real cars, they’re little urban runabouts that are also, technically cars. Unlike those two examples, the Spark’s chassis and 84 HP, 1.2 liter 4-cylinder engine feel rock solid at highway speeds. The chassis absorbs Chicago’s bumpy roads and potholes with an isolating competence that somehow eluded the larger, heavier Scion tC I tested the week before, too, and the engine doesn’t have the same raucous buzz as some of the 3 cyl. cars I’ve tested.

Also surprising was how roomy the Chevy Spark actually is. The (heated!) seats are high, so you sit in the thing like you’re in a dining room chair, with knees more bent than normal. It’s surprisingly comfortable, with more than enough rear seat leg room for the kiddos and even your adult friends, for short trips (say, 20-30 minutes).

Chevy Spark | Will it Baby?

All that talk about legroom brings me to this – which, as I said, was a mission-critical question for us as prospective Chevy Spark buyers. As you can see in the pictures, Chicco’s rear-facing travel system fits well enough behind the driver’s seat, and the folding stroller deal fits snugly in the rear, along with a decent diaper bag. Not much else fits back there, however – but that’s not what took the Spark off our shopping list.

Frustratingly, the same thing that makes the Chevy Spark impractical for us as a “second car”, is the same thing that makes the Chevy Volt totally impossible to justify as a “primary car” for our family: it only has four seats.

As it is, we have 2 kids and retired (or semi-retired) parents. A third child would render both cars immediately useless, as would one of the kids wanting to bring a friend home from school or wanting to head to dinner with even one of the available parental units, you know? The four seats thing is disappointing in the Spark, but it’s understandable. In the Volt, it’s an unforgivably stupid product-planning choice that makes Chevy’s own Cruze Eco and Diesel look like no-brainers, even at $29,000.

Chevy Spark | Final Thoughts

So, all that said, the Spark wasn’t for us. We’re breeders, and two kids is just a start. Despite that, with a price tag under $15,000 (in real-world pricing) and Chevy’s excellent MyLink infotainment system featuring the safety and convenience of OnStar, the fun, economical Chevy Spark is a great choice for young urbanites and their families. If you’re a one-child family that’s going to remain a one-child family, the Spark may even ascend to “primary car” status. It’s that good – and the marine-grade vinyl seating in our tester was a fun change of pace in the entry car market that you won’t really see in cars like the Nissan Versa or the aforementioned Mitsubishi. You won’t convince anyone it’s leather, probably, but it’s going to be easier to clean than cloth, and that’s something.

What do you think, dear readers? Is the 2014 Chevy Spark exactly the kind of forward-looking city car that will make up America’s driving future, or is it just another throwaway subcompact that no one will remember fondly in a couple of years? You know what I think – let us know what you think in the comments, below.

In America, November is a month of thanks- and I have a lot to be thankful for this year. One of those things is the fact that GM decided to let me drive a 2014 Chevy Cruze Diesel from Oak Park, Illinois to Wellington, Ohio to visit friends and family over the Thanksgiving weekend. All I had to do in return is let you, dear readers, know what I thought of the thing. SO, sit back and get ready, because this is going to be a weird one.

1. the Chevy Cruze Diesel is a Quality Car

More than anything else, what struck me most about this latest Chevy CavalierCobalt Cruze was how well-built everything is compared to Chevy compacts of yore. Even compared to my 2009 Malibu mild-hybrid, the doors shut with the same sturdy “whoomp” you’d only get from Mercedes’ doors a generation ago. Beyond that, everything feels over-built- from the full-opening rubber door seals to the heavy hood to the beefy door-handles. I loved all of it, and it definitely gave me the impression that I could expect to get 200,000 plus miles of loyal service from the little sedan.

On top of the “quality feel” of the components, the 2014 Chevy Cruze Diesel had instruments that were easy to read and almost everything was, generally, easy to set and adjust. I say “almost” everything, though, because of this …

Did I say I hated it? I don’t hate the Chevy MyLink’s bizarre mix of touch-screen and button-driven menus, I loathe it. I despise it. I am against everything the people who made it stand for, sure- but I don’t hate it. What I hate is everyone at GM who decided that MyLink should be a thing in the first place. Surrounded by quality sheet metal, soft leather, and legitimately slick gear head tech (more on that, in a moment), the MyLink system seemed cheap and out-dated, leading me to ask, for the thousandth time, why automakers don’t just build a quality iPad dock into their dashboard and work with Apple (or HTC, or whoever) to get the drivers right. There is simply no reason for GM (or Ford, or any other car-maker) to be in the OS/GUI space, and MyLink is a vivid example of why that’s a fact.

If I’m being 100% honest, however- I did find a way to make the MyLink system do exactly what I wanted: I used OnStar.

OnStar continues to be the biggest and best selling point for GM vehicles. GM were mad- MAD, I tell you!- to ever let that slip into the hands of their competitors. When I pressed the button, I was greeted at 4AM, on Thanksgiving morning, by a cheerful OnStar agent who set my GPS, found me an XM station, and popped the trunk for me while I was fumbling around looking for an in-car trunk release (which I never did find, by the way).

2. the Chevy Cruze Diesel is Full of Racy Tech

The 2014 Cruze I drove was packed with racy, gear head tech. From active aerodynamic shutters that closed at speed to reduce the car’s drag to the 2.0 L Ecotec diesel that, once I figured out where to shift, gave back more than adequate performance and acceleration. All that tech, including the traction control and anti-lock brakes, was nearly invisible from the driver’s seat. Perfect, in other words.

3. the Chevy Cruze Diesel’s MPG is Amazing

I’ve made the drive from Oak Park, IL to Oberlin, OH more times than I can count by now, and I know just about every exit on the 335-ish mile trip. Let me tell you that, despite doing the math, I wasn’t mentally prepared to make the entire trip on half a tank of gas. I was, in fact, blown away by the idea that I could drive from Chicago to Cleveland and back on a single tank of gas.

That kind of range, combined with solid build quality, is what EVs are up against. It’s not about whether or not electric cars are going to displace gasoline-powered cars, it’s about what EVs can offer over cars like the Chevy Cruze diesel. This is the future of middle America, guys: diesel.

4. the Chevy Cruze Diesel Should be a Buick

Besides the hateful MyLink system, there was something else about the Cruze that upset me. In fact, for the entirety of the five days I was in the car, I kept finding myself staring at it …

… the passenger door panel didn’t seem to line up with the dashboard. It’s a problem, sure, but it’s one that I was willing to forgive. After all, the 2014 Chevy Cruze diesel was fast, relatively comfortable, packed with features- did I mention the doors shut like my dad’s old Mercedes SL?

I was willing to let it go, is what I’m saying. That is, until I had the following conversation about 100 miles into Indiana:

Me: Doesn’t that bother you?

Wife: Doesn’t what bother me?

Me: Your door. It doesn’t fit right.

Wife: It’s fine.

Me: No. No, it’s not. You don’t see that in the little Voklswagen wagons, and that’s what this car is supposed to be competing against.

Wife: I could see it competing with the Volkswagens.

Me: Yeah?

Wife: I like the big screen. I like the OnStar. I like the Nav. I feel like it’s safe.

Me: I thought you hated diesels?

Wife: I can’t really tell it’s a diesel. It’s fine. I could see you buying one of these, if it was a wagon. (Are you listening, GM!?)

Me: They make a wagon.

Wife: How much is it?

Me: I don’t know. The GM guy left me a folder that has the window sticker in it. It’s on your side. What does it say?

Wife: $28,000.

That’s right, kids. GM is asking twenty and eight thousand US American dollars for its 2014 Chevy Cruze diesel sedan – and that seems utterly unbelievable to me. That price, by the way, is $1000 more than the Volkswagen Jetta TDi with all the same goodies, plus a 6-way power driver’s seat, a sunroof, push-button starter (it’s a thing), and the all-important VW badge on the front of the car.

It seems to me that GM has a problem with the Cruze diesel. They’ve built a car that’s capable of going toe-to-toe with a premium competitor, but they’ve stuck the wrong badge on the nose. The truth is that this engine placed in Buick’s baby Verano (which is based on the same platform as the Cruze) could demand a $30K OTD price without anyone batting an eyelash.

Granted, you could make a case that Buick doesn’t appeal to millenials and that Chevy is trying to re-establish itself as a brand that young professionals would consider shopping, but that would be a ridiculous, crap argument. There is no reason to believe that putting the 2.0 L Ecotec turbodiesel engine in a Verano would hurt Chevy’s Cruze sales, and there are plenty of reasons to believe that a diesel offering in a compact Buick would give that brand an edge in the entry-luxe Acura/Lexus/Volvo field that Buick plays in.

So, would I buy a $28,000 Chevy Cruze? If it was a wagon, maybe. As a sedan? Not a chance- but I would recommend the car to, say, my in-laws. It’s a great little car, then, but not for me.

With subdued styling, excellent driving dynamics, and weak yen helping keep the R&D costs down, it’s no surprise that Honda’s latest Accords are hot-sellers. What may be surprising is that this year’s Green Car of the Year awards panelists couldn’t agree on what car to give the award to. What they did, insteand, was give it to three: the 2014 Honda Accord, Accord Hybrid, and Accord PHEV! You can check out the full story, below, in an article that originally appeared on the Environment News Service. Enjoy!

LOS ANGELES, California, November 22, 2013 (ENS) – The 2014 Honda Accord has been chosen as the Green Car of the Year®, but this year the award goes not to just one model but three: the Accord, Accord Hybrid, and Accord Plug-In Hybrid. “Green Car…

The new for 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid goes on sale today, with a reasonable pricetag, a 50 MPG EPA rating, an almost impossibly low-emissions 4 cylinder engine, a torquey electric motor, and withOUT a conventional transmission.

As I mentioned in my initial review of Honda’s 50 MPG Accord Hybrid earlier this month, this new Honda is different from other hybrids. Instead of an engine connecting to a conventional gearbox or CVT, the new Honda’s engine is directly connected to the drive wheels. The torque multiplication of lower gears is simulated with variable input from the electric motors at low speeds. As before, the best way to sum it up is like this: the 50 MPG Accord Hybrid drives exactly, precisely, and inimitably like a slot-car.

The batteries, electric motors, and Earth Dreams engine inside Honda’s new hybrid are definitely awesome, but the real magic to the car is in its ECU …

… which is massive.

The 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid’s driving dynamics and fuel efficiency all come down to that box up there. Much more than a conventional ECU, the Honda unit acts as a voltage converter and capacitor, handling how much juice goes from the battery to the motor and back into the battery during regenerative braking and engine braking. It’s a marvel, and it’s complicated enough that the three Honda reps I was listening to describe all did so using slightly different, equally simple, deceptively confusing analogies. Still, the system works- the implication there being that Honda’s engineers are smarter than me … and I can live with that.

You can buy the 2014 Honda Accord Hybrid today for as little as $29,155, which climbs to $34,905 with all the digital, leather, and sliding see-through roof goodies tacked on. So, that’s it. Go out and get you one.

Here it is, the revolutionary new for 2014, 50 MPG Accord Hybrid. Before we get too far into my driving impressions of the car, though, I want to make a few things clear. First, the new Accord hybrid is a revelation. Second, In-n-Out Burger is seriously overrated. It’s all about the vastly superior Whataburger, and that was the first stop I (and the similarly burger-wise Jeff Palmer, from Temple of VTEC) made in Honda’s newest toy.

At that point in the drive, the Whataburger manager rushing into the parking lot to ask us why we were taking pictures of the Whataburger was the most exciting thing about the drive. I was riding along in the passenger seat. The roads weren’t particularly twisty or elevation-change-y. The Accord was, from the front passenger seat, an Accord. It was excellent, in typical Honda, but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d fly a dozen journalists out to a swanky hotel to ooh and aah over, you know?

I was about to express something along those lines to my eager pilot, in fact, when the roads started to get twisty, and some kind of sick change came over him. Out of nowhere, he decides he’s some long-lost AndrettiEarnhardt Senna heir, and we are screaming into corners – which are clearly marked “35” – at almost 70 mph. I know how fast we were going, because I was afraid, the tires were howling, and I pulled the bitch move of looking at the speedometer.

“Sure it is,” I thought. Still, I stayed mostly quiet about the speed we were carrying into corners, thinking about how I’d been on racetracks with guys named Andretti, Kendall, and Frentzen (among others) at seriously Serious speeds, and how I was going to die in the middle of Texas because some frustrated race-car-driver-turned-blogger wanted to see how the new Accord Hybrid compared to the S2000.

We drove until we saw the giant armadillo …

… then switched seats.

I spent some time adjusting the Honda Accord’s driver’s seat. Height, seat angle, steering wheel – they’re all adjustable. I made sure I could see out the mirrors, and I took a quick inventory of the dash. Big speedo. No tach. Looking down, I saw “P R N D B” in the console. I drove around a bit in “D”, like a good little auto-journo, until we pulled into a Honda-designated checkpoint at a golf course, where Jeff got out to snap some pics of the car.

“What’s ‘B mode’?” I asked Jeff, now happily buckled into the passenger seat.

“Braking,” he explained. “It uses the engine and electric motors to slow the car down and charge the batteries. Put it in ‘B’, that’s what I was using.”

Fair enough. We pulled out onto the twisty, hilly roads outside of San Antonio in a 50 MPG Honda Accord Hybrid, and I immediately started speeding.

I couldn’t help it.

It was the car.

“Damn!” I said, whooshing through another corner way too easily.

Jeff just nodded.

In “D”, the car feels limp and stupid. Avoid D.

In “B” mode, with an almost 1:1 connection between your foot and the Accord’s speed, it’s perfect. Understand, too, as you read all this, that I am supremely jaded when it comes to “sporty” cars. I ride motorcycles. In addition, over the last 15-16 years I’ve been driving Moslers, Ferraris, AMG Mercedes, Corvettes, Lamborghinis, Porsches, and (of course) 1000+ HP Nissan GTRs fairly regularly. None of them were as bonehead simple to make go fast in real-world conditions as the Honda. None of them were as smooth, and – with the exception of a particularly eager blue Mosler Raptor maybe a dozen years ago – none of those cars actually made me smile.

This new Honda is different. Its engine is directly connected to the drive wheels with clutches that use variable input from the electric motors to make up for the lack of torque multiplication at low revs. I’ll cover that in my next Honda Accord Hybrid article, though – all you need to know is this: the 50 MPG Accord Hybrid drives exactly, precisely, and inimitably like a slot-car.

Want to slow down? Back off the gas pedal. In my tester, backing off hauled the car down from 50-ish mph to 20-ish quickly enough to make braking through the twisty roads optional. Even in stop-and-go, there was almost no coasting. Give it a bit of gas, it rolled forward slowly. Take your foot off, and the car stopped. Go into a corner too hot? Back off the gas. Tires still quiet mid-corner? Give it a bit more … now, maybe a bit more. I SAID GIVE IT MORE, DAMMIT!! All of that, and we never – no matter how we pushed the car in B mode – saw MPG drop below 46.

Most of the time, we saw more than 60 mpg.

All that said, the only thing this new Accord Hybrid needs to be the perfect everyday car is a set of tasteful-looking performance wheels to replace the factory hubcap simulators and a set of grippy tires to replace the low-rolling resistance nonsense the cars were saddled with during our test drive. Make that swap, paint the thing mouse gray, and you’d have a perfect high-speed Q-ship to blast down the highway with.

“That’s what we wanted,” said Art St. Cyr, head of Honda’s motorsports program and one of the company execs on-hand at the event. “We wanted it to be a hybrid and we wanted to hit a number (presumably, he meant that 50 MPG mark), but we wanted it to be fun.”

Based on my experience driving Honda’s gas-powered V6 coupe version of the Accord (with the 6-speed manual), as well as the 4 and 6-cylinder gas versions (also on hand) I think Art’s nailed it. The 50 mpg Accord Hybrid is the best Honda Accord. It’s the most fun Accord you can buy – and also the most expensive. But, hey- you get what you pay for, right?

This is like something out of the Jetsons. The Aero Train is a ground-effects vehicle…kind of like a combination between a Harrier VTOL jet and a hovercraft. Using electrically-powered motors, the aero train hovers just inches above the ground, eliminating any rolling resistance and allowing for a smooth ride and allowing for speeds of up to 124 mph. While the idea of an airplane/train hybrid is nothing new, the unique setup of the Aero Train sounds promising, if not in any way practical.

A U-shaped channel that the Aero Train travels down would control air flow and provide the Aero Train’s robotic overlord with a “road” to follow. Computers control the pitch, roll, and yaw of the prototype, which is obviously many years from any practical application. Eventually, a system of solar panels and/or wind turbines could provide zero-emissions electricity for the Aero Train which, due to its unique design, requires a lot less energy to run than your typical maglev trains. I’d be especially attracted to this idea if it eliminated the whole “mass” part of mass transit and instead provided a limited number of travelers with a comfortable and affordable way to get around. As it is, I wouldn’t mind having a hovering personal vehicle, though the applications for this as a mass transit solution are pretty far fetched.

So, while I’m not banking on such a “ground effect” vehicle showing up anytime soon, I will always admired people who can come up with a completely impractical science-fiction solution to a serious problem. And I don’t mean that in a bad way.

Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to HEMIs. You can read about his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout or follow his non-nonsensical ramblings on Twitter @harshcougar.

We’ve covered Russia’s CNG/electric hybrid YoMobile before (here, and here) but now the cars are getting really – well, REAL. To show off just how real things are getting, the keys to a fully functional “pre-production” model were recently haded over to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (the World’s Craziest Bad***) for a quick spin around the bloc.

As before, the cars are expected to weigh about 1,500 lbs and achieve about 100 km (62 mi) per gallon of gas. Russian bajillionaire (and YoMobile’s primary backer) Mikhail Prokhorov’s claims the CNG-powered cars now reach speeds of up to 130 kmh (up from the original “target” of 120) and will sell for the equivalent of just 15,000 USD … which is none-too-shabby for an innovative little alt-car that features full GPS and a touchscreen in-dash computer.

Putin’s quick drive and first impressions of the nearly-ready-for-prime-time YoMobile (dubbed into English) is below. Enjoy!

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The content produced by this site is for entertainment purposes only. Opinions and comments published on this site may not be sanctioned by, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sustainable Enterprises Media, Inc., its owners, sponsors, affiliates, or subsidiaries.